


what's in the frame

by desdemona (LydiaOfNarnia)



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: AkiSae Week, F/M, Movie Night, obligatory 'hopped right out of the movie screen because i think you're cute' au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-06
Updated: 2016-03-06
Packaged: 2018-05-25 04:50:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6180844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LydiaOfNarnia/pseuds/desdemona
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Akiteru Tsukishima is a responsible, reliable twenty-something who has only been to see the new action film at the theater eight times in the past week. This is perfectly normal behavior.</p>
            </blockquote>





	what's in the frame

He didn't care what anyone else told him. The amount of times Akiteru had been to see _Autumn Storm_ in the past week was absolutely in no way unhealthy.

If he really considered it, he supposed it had passed the point of “unhealthy” on the fifth day -- yes, he had gone to the movies every single day this week -- when he had got out of one showing of the film only to promptly double back and purchase a ticket for the very next. Maybe twice in a row was a bit much -- and from a young man who normally liked to pride himself on making his parents worry about him as little as possible, the fact that every single conversation he’d had with his mother this week consisted of some form of, “have you seen _Autumn Storm_ yet, mom, oh mom, you have to go see it, it's so amazing,” was doing a great job of defeating his cause.

Akiteru didn't care. Akiteru was a happy, well adjusted twenty-something with free time on his hands and just enough pocket money to spare. He was absolutely being responsible about this.

His younger brother would probably call it obsessive. But, as Akiteru mused as he stepped into the wide movie theater for the… _eighth? ninth?_ time this week, Kei insulted a lot of things, to the point where it almost seemed like a pastime for the stubborn teenager. _That_ was the sort of developing behavior his parents should be worrying about in their sons. Akiteru’s newly-developed fixation on an unimpressive action film by an stunningly unskilled director was not.

He didn't even like action movies all that much. Explosions scared him. He would be the first person to admit that there were way too many explosions in this movie.

Yet there was also _her_ , and she more than made up for any poorly-executed fight sequences or stilted dialogue the film itself could throw at him.

She was a thunderstorm. She was rain glistening on bare skin, the hum of electricity faint in the air, the explosion of power as lightning found its mark. She was the star of this movie, for as much as her half an hour of screentime would allow. And every second the camera was on her, she blew him away.

So maybe he didn't really like the movie that much. That was okay. It didn't matter.

The theatre was empty tonight; poor reviews and the late hour had kept most theatregoers from haunting the ticket booths. Even Akiteru himself had never been to the movies this late at night; it was nearing midnight, but he had needed to see her face at least once that day. As he lowered himself into one of the seats near the front of the theatre-- nearsightedness ran in his family, though compared to his brother he'd gotten off lucky-- he made himself comfortable and took a moment to appreciate the fact that it would be just him tonight.

Him. Alone. With her.

… did that sound creepy? He was pretty sure that sounded creepy. Wincing, he buried his face in his popcorn and hoped that the increasingly weird paths his brain was beginning to discover didn't mean his morals were being corrupted. It wasn't worth it, over such a crummy movie.

The movie started up a few minutes later; fifteen or so minutes of opening credits, followed by a familiar overture and title sequence. He didn't pay as much attention to the opening; the landscape shots were way too shaky, and she wasn't in this part anyway. At the very least, he might be able to get in a few minutes of napping before she made her grand entrance.

His phone buzzed in his pocket. Wincing in irritation, he slipped it out and glanced at the screen. It was one of his classmates and drinking buddies, asking him what he was doing.

He quickly tapped out a brief, slightly testy, _“at the movies”_ before turning his attention to the screen once more. That should have put an end to it -- only, his phone buzzed once more.

_> text: Ari, 11:58pm_   
_\- not that movie again? whyyyyy???_

He was just about to ignore his friend and switch off his phone when he felt something hit him on the back of the head.

He froze.

A mistake. Of course it was. That was the only thing it could have possibly been. Because absolutely, no way had someone purposely just flung a piece of popcorn at the back of his head.  
People didn't do that, right? Like, there was movie theatre etiquette, and the most basic rule had to be _“don't throw popcorn at innocent filmgoers”._ It was right up there with _“don't start fistfights in the aisles_ ” and _“don't take out your phone during the movie”_ \--

Oh. Oops.

To his own defense, he hadn't even realized there was anyone else in the theatre. He'd been sure he was alone. Mortification, heavy and unforgiving, hit him like a punch to the face. His first instinct was to spin around and apologize to the person behind him; he didn't want to be that guy preventing others from enjoying the movie just because he thought his phone was more important.  
Then another piece of popcorn hit him in the head, and suddenly he didn't feel that bad anymore.

His phone was away. His eyes were fixed on the screen, focused and determined not to acknowledge the atrocious rudeness of the person behind him. Even as more and more popcorn pelted the back of his head and shoulders -- he was very certain at least a few pieces caught in his hair -- he refused to look back. He wasn't sure if he didn't want to give Popcorn Person the satisfaction of seeing how red his face was getting, or that he imagined he could simply will away an awkward situation by pretending it didn't exist.

It didn't really matter, because when the popcorn finally stopped and instead he felt something shockingly cold press to the back of his neck, he jumped up with a shriek, and any dignity he'd been hoping to maintain flew out the emergency exit.

Behind him, he could hear someone laughing -- downright _cackling_ \-- but Akiteru was too startled by the cold whatever-it-was to react immediately. He sunk back down in his seat again -- far down, enough so that his head and shoulders were completely out of the line of fire -- before he finally worked up the courage to turn around in his seat and see exactly for himself who and why. Cautiously poking his eyes over the back of his chair, he took in the girl rocking gleefully in his seat behind him. It only took a second for his jaw to fall open in abject disbelief.

“That was amazing!” she chortled, kicking her legs out in front of her -- hitting his seat in the process. “You _screamed!_ Are you even okay?”

There was no mistaking the figure in front of him -- not the sharply cut blonde hair, dancing eyes, or smile that cut across her face like a slash of a knife. Everything about her was in some way defined, sharp, dangerous, right down to her rounded face and featured that were just a little too harsh. She was familiar.

She was her.

“Saeko,” he breathed automatically, and not a second later heat filled his cheeks as he realized how stupid he was. The girl in front of him was not Saeko from the movie. That was fiction; this was reality. Saeko was fictional, and thus was absolutely not sitting in the seal behind him in an otherwise empty theatre, throwing popcorn pieces at the back of his head.

But instead of replying with a confused stare, Saeko grinned. Her eyes seemed to gleam in the light from the movie screen; black painted nails drummed against her thigh as she leaned forward, cherry lips pursing.

“Yup,” she whispered, popping the ‘p’ in his face with a sound that caused him to flinch back, but not turn his wide eyes away. His awe was all too evident; her grin only widened, showing off cream colored teeth and the beginnings of what would someday be laughter lines forming at the edges of her mouth.

“Surprised?”

“Very,” he replied, practically choking on the word. The urge to pinch himself crossed his mind, but passed just as quickly. He knew he hadn't fallen asleep, because the sensation of cold on the back of his neck -- Saeko’s water bottle, he realized now -- still lingered, all too real.

“You're not supposed to be here,” he managed to say, and he was so relieved that his tongue was actually working that he hardly realized how stupid his words actually were. “You're in the movie.”

“I am in the movie,” she nodded, her tone imitating one a person would use when talking to a young child. “I'm also watching the movie. I'm allowed to do that, right?”

He nodded dumbly.

“You've seen it enough times that I figured you wouldn’t mind company, just this once. If you don't like it... I can go again. Fine with me.”

“No!” he replied just as quickly, eyes wide and surprised, even as her expression shifted to mirror his. It was only for a split second -- then the half-smirk reappeared on her face, as captivating in real life as it had been on the screen, and he felt his heart pound.

“Okay,” she replied, and in the light bouncing off the movie screen her dark eyes really did seem to glow. “I'll stick around.”

How long? That was the question on the tip of Akiteru’s tongue, fighting tooth and nail for dominance over all the other questions (why him, why now, how on earth...) Yet he was struck mute by his own amazement, silent as Saeko easily swung one leg over the seat in front of her, and then another, until she lowered herself down next to him. She’d even managed to not spill her popcorn. Very casually, she reached into the bucket and tossed one of the buttery pieces into her mouth before grinning at him.

“Movie’s on,” she reminded him, pointing up at the screen; then, very lightly, her finger moved to tap the underside of his chin, and Akiteru felt his mouth shut with a click of teeth. Startled out of his blatant gaping, he spun around in his seat and focused in on the movie screen, trying very hard to figure out if he was just dreaming -- or if he had finally cracked under the weight of college pressures and adult life.

Oh _man_. If he really was insane, what did that mean? What was he going to tell his professors? His boss? His parents? Was Saeko going to follow him home tonight, and would he wind up having to explain to everyone he knew that he now had a girlfriend straight out of a movie, who was probably just a figment of his imagination? What if going crazy ran in families? Did that mean Kei was going to go crazy too? What would he do if --

His mental conga line of doom was suddenly interrupted by a sharp squeal from the seat next to him. Spinning around in alarm, he found Saeko grinning widely up at the screen.

“Look at that!” she exclaimed, almost childishly gleeful as she nudged his shoulder and pointed up at the movie. “Look who it is! It’s me! It’s me!”

And there Saeko was, riding into the scene on a motorcycle looking exactly as stunning as ever. It was the very sight that had kept Akiteru captivated for the past week; the glint of her golden hair in the sun, the way her black leather jacket fit so seamlessly over her shoulders, her laughter --

Those same peals of laughter were now ringing out from the girl next to him. Akiteru felt torn between watching the Saeko on screen and watching the real one so close to him. Eventually, he decided that the tangible Saeko was a bit more important right now, if only for the fact that she was so excited that she was drowning out the rest of the movie.

“Why are you here?” he asked bluntly, and she fell abruptly silent as she turned to stare at him.

“Huh?” The bemused expression on her face was almost comical.

“Here. In this theater. Not in the actual movie. Am I dreaming? That’s it, I’m dreaming, right? It’s either that or I really am crazy, and if I go crazy I don’t think my boss is going to let me off of work!”

His own agitation served to baffle Saeko even more; she tilted her head to the side, a strand of hair falling across her nose in a way that caused it to scrunch up. Her skin was very tan, Akiteru could see now; there was a light dusting of freckles across her nose, and her eyes were the sort of caramel toffee color that he’d only ever seen a few times before in foreign candy advertisements.

She was beautiful.

“You’re… not crazy, if it helps,” she assured him, and from the looks of it she was fighting the urge to smile again -- laughing at him. “And you aren’t dreaming, either, ‘cause that would either mean I am too, or I’m not real. And…” Curiously, she pinched herself on the cheek, and the skin flushed red; she turned back to him, face illuminated by a bright grin. “Pretty sure I’m real!”

“But…” He was so confused that he wondered if his brain was about to short-circuit; maybe that would be less painful than making a total idiot out of himself in front of the most beautiful girl in the world. If she really was Saeko, the Saeko from the movie, then she would think a guy like him was just… pathetic, wouldn’t she?

“Hey.”

He looked up. She was grinning at him. “You’re pretty cute, you know.”

Oh god. He was actually going to die.

This was the way he was going to go, dead at twenty-two, a victim of a heart attack in the middle of an empty theater at midnight. The police would never know what had happened; his parents would be left with questions for the rest of their sad, sad lives, always wondering what had happened and probably blaming the overabundance of butter in the popcorn for their son’s untimely demise. How cruel.

“I mean, in the way a puppy’s cute when it spins around in a circle a bunch of times and then runs into a wall. That sort of cute.”

Akiteru suddenly had the very clear mental image of melting straight out of his seat and onto the floor, dissolving into thin air, and vanishing from this plane of existence forever.

Saeko was either oblivious to his mental agonies or perfectly aware and delighting in them. Smirk back in place, she drew both legs up onto the seat, tucking them under her; her attention turned back to the film again, and Akiteru was free to bury his entire face in his popcorn bucket.

Several minutes of silently screaming into the void later, and he could feel eyes on him again. Her gaze was as powerful as a caress; he could feel it sweeping over his skin, leaving a warm sensation wherever it touched him, and he was powerless to resist being drawn back in again. He met her eyes once more, warm and utterly aflame.

“Hey.” She nudged him with the toe of her boot, even though she already had his full attention.

“Am I allowed to ask how come you’ve been to see this movie so many times?”

He cleared his throat, sweeping his brain for an answer that sounded somewhat better than “I think I might like watching you a bit too much”. He didn’t want to sound like a creep; he definitely wasn’t a creep, because the fact that he’d seen this movie solely for her so many times had been substantially less creepy when she was only a character on the screen.

“Actually, it was you,” he finally admitted, and his bit his tongue as he gauged her reaction. Instead of looking weirded out, however, she actually seemed intrigued; so he pushed on. “I… I saw you for the first time, and I guess I just… wanted to see you again? And again, and again. I don’t even like action movies much, to be honest, and I have three essays due by the end of next week, and rent’s due this weekend, and I have so much on my plate so I really shouldn’t be wasting so much money seeing the same movie so many times, but you’re just so beautiful that --”

Her eyes widened. His ramble died abruptly, and he was pretty sure he actually choked a little bit on pure air. _He had actually said that oh wow oh wow he’d actually said that out loud --_

“Beautiful, huh?” Red lips turned up to one side, a flash of white teeth and hands suddenly on his cheek -- he could feel her nails, manicured but worn, running along his skin gently. “Don’t look so surprised,” she whispered, voice low and smoky. “When you give someone a compliment like that, don’t immediately look like you wanna take it back.”

“I -- no.” Words still wouldn’t come easy, but somehow he still knew what to say. “I meant it. You’re beautiful. That’s why I came.”

“What’s your name?”

“Tsukishima Akiteru,” he replied automatically, holding totally still as her finger caressed the corner of his mouth -- gently, like she was afraid of breaking him if she pressed too hard.

“Don’t you know you shouldn’t go around calling strangers beautiful?” she asked, studying him raptly from under dark eyelashes. He could feel himself shrug, though he wasn’t quite conscious of his body doing it. He was too focused on Saeko, and the feeling of her against his skin -- so utterly real.

“You aren’t a stranger, though. Not to me.”

He had seen the movie so many times that he’d committed every bit of information given about Saeko to memory three times over. But it wasn’t enough -- it so was not enough, especially when she still didn’t know the first thing about him past his name.

(And the fact that he thought she was beautiful.)

Saeko was leaning forwards now, face close enough to his that he was almost sure she was  
looking for something in his eyes. The proximity should have made him uncomfortable, but he only felt curious and eager to be even closer.

“A week from now -- or a month, or a year, when you can’t come see this movie every night -- you still gonna think of me? You still gonna think I’m beautiful?”

“Yes.” He didn’t have to think about it, because of course he would. “I - I don’t think I’ll ever forget you.” Because she had literally hopped out of a movie and into the theatre seat next to him, of course -- that sort of thing wasn’t easy to forget. But Saeko herself was an enigma, certainly a character -- a person that Akiteru wouldn’t be able to leave behind for a long time.

Slowly, slowly, Saeko closed the short distance between them; by the time their lips brushed, Akiteru’s own eyes had already slipped shut. Saeko’s mouth against his was everything he might have imagined it would be, fire and eagerness and a tentative passion that was just trying to find it’s footing. It was also a fragile thing, cautious and somewhat unsure -- not just from Akiteru’s side, either. As confident as Saeko was, even she was not immune to the trepidation heavy in the moment. Yet as her painted nails brushed over his face, Akiteru deepened the kiss, steady and reassuring, and suddenly not much else mattered.

When they finally broke apart, Akiteru’s face was flushed and his breath came in short heaves. Saeko, too, looked up at him with wide eyes, obviously flustered.

“That felt real,” he remarked breathlessly, and she nodded her head.

 _“I_ felt real,” she whispered back, and at once she was staring up at him like he had just handed her the moon on a string. Akiteru almost felt the urge to withdraw at the intensity of her stare, but he forced himself to meet her eyes.

“I… I want to see you again. I’ll come here every night if I have to, I need to see you again. Saeko… can I? Will you let me?”

She huffed out a breathless laugh, shaking her head. She was smiling again at his words; grinning, even, and Akiteru’s chest felt lighter at the sight. Her smile was one of the most beautiful things he had ever seen, he decided in that moment. As if reading his mind, Saeko’s grin only widened to reveal rows of teeth, slight dimples accentuating her cheeks.

“As long as you keep thinking of me, we can see each other as many times as we want,” she replied. On the screen, there was the sound of something exploding; the movie, however, had long since been forgotten.

“Is that the secret, then? You’re real as long as I think about you?”

She shrugged, shoulders sharp in her leather jacket. “I don’t even know. Sounds about right, though. I’m real to you. Maybe… I am real. As long as you believe in me.”

“You’re real,” he assured her automatically, and this time there wasn’t an ounce of doubt in his head. “I know you are.”

She grinned, her smile going slightly lopsided as she reached out to ruffle his hair. This time, it was Akiteru who leaned close; but Saeko was the one to kiss him again, gentler this time, but with no less emotion. Electricity buzzed where their lips touched, and there was no doubt in Akiteru’s mind that this was more than real.

When the closing credits rolled, Saeko finally pulled away; he turned his head for a second, and didn’t even realize that she had vanished until he glanced back and found the seat empty. Looking up again, he watched the screen slowly fade to black; left alone in an empty movie theatre at a quarter to two in the morning, Akiteru sat back in his seat and heaved out a sigh.

The next night, when he came back, the theatre was empty except for a single blonde head, sitting four rows away from the front. She turned her head back towards him, and the wide grin that lit up her face was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.

**Author's Note:**

> “Cinema is a matter of what's in the frame and what's out.” ― Martin Scorsese
> 
> Based sort of around the legends of tulpa (a sentient being said to be created through the power on the mind). So Saeko is like a tulpa in Akiteru's case -- as long as he believes in her and wants her to exist, she will exist. Also, someone once threw a piece of popcorn at the back of my head in the middle of a movie and I did not know how to handle it, so this was born.


End file.
